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Poor Duke Effort Will Affect Take-Two's Bottom Line

It had plenty of hype and it might avoid the status of "total flop" due to name-brand recognition alone.

But even so, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says his firm has lowered their quarterly expectations for Duke Nukem Forever publisher Take-Two Interactive. Unfortunately, the sluggish performance of the poorly reviewed DNF has sort of balanced things out after L.A. Noire sold better than anticipated. Said Pachter in a note to investors:

"We had previously expected Duke to be one of the year's top sellers due to a high degree of hype and a dedicated fan base, and expected solid profit contribution as the bulk of development had been previously expensed. However, the game's poor reviews (average Metacritic score of 49) likely had a negative impact on sales, causing us to lower our [first quarter] sell-in estimate to 1.5 million units from 3 million units."

Yeah, well, an average score of 49 is just about right; even a little generous in our opinion. In regards to L.A. Noire, Pachter said initial expectations sat around 3.5 million copies shipped, but the game has already shipped over 4 million. Sadly, this good performance can't quite make up for the Duke falling flat.

Comments (22 posts)

Doesn't matter, the game was great entirely just for the fact that duke and his one-liners was in it. Sure it had plenty of tech problems, but I don't care, getting to be the Duke again was just a blast.

I really enjoyed Duke this time around. Also enjoyed LA Noire, but not as much as Duke for some reason. (I say that because I only played through LA Noire once while I played through Duke more than once)

i dont understand how you could prefer DNF to LA noire ... i played both, and being a BIG duke fan i was very disapointed and sad about it, while LA noire is actually a GREAT game with a lot of potential and quality, and the only thing DNF have is duke's personality and emblematics, the game itself was just, well, a big disapointment to all duke fansLast edited by AugustoDeItalia on 7/5/2011 9:45:52 PM

I suppose that the reason I enjoyed Duke so much is that I didn't have any big expectations for it. Everyone was looking forward to it with high hopes, but I kind of knew it wouldn't rise to the hopes of the many. The game was what I expected, a nice shooter that had some 5th gen elements of gaming in it. That's all I wanted from it and in my opinion that's what I received.

Now, LA Noire was an amazing game. However, I enjoyed the story a lot more than the actual gameplay. Same way I felt with Portal 2. I loved LA Noire's story greatly! However, the gameplay elements were nothing special to me. For some reason it felt dull; maybe because I had felt that I played similar games compared to it. Whereas with Duke, I hadn't played a game like that in a long while.

I'm usually the kind of guy who will only buy a video game because of it's story, like LA Noire. But occasionally I enjoy games like Duke Nukem Forever that are only games and are just fun to handle. =]

At first I was underwhelmed as Duke has clearly been overshadowed by the flashiness of this generation. But on my second playthrough I found out why it wasn't so great... I was playing it like a modern FPS. I was being careful, trying to figure things out, using modern cover methods, conserving ammo, conserving pipe bombs and pills, sticking to certain guns for certain situations.

All of that modern thought doesn't work. If you go ballsdeep from the get go and run and gun and drop and pick up weapons and toss bombs and execute aliens and pop pills and slam beers and pound alien ass without thinking about a single thing and taking all logic out of the puzzles by going with the obvious: then the game is a total blast and riot and doesn't feel like the stitched together Frankenstein that it kinda is.

I stand by my 6.5 for the dull effects, but I'm really happy I bought it. And you know, it's worth it to unlock the Duke soundboard and put all Duke's lines on my Cell Phone.

So I really hope Gearbox get's a chance to give Duke a true next gen experience and soon. To 2K: "Quit bleedin', P*ssy"

Despite the bad reviews, it is still one of the most enjoyable games for me so far this year. My expectations weren't as lofty as other peoples apparently, so I wasn't disappointed in the least. Except for the whole Halo-style two weapons only thing.

good ol patcher stating the obvious again!why does this guy get paid for this?can someone pay me for stating the obvious?uncharted 3 will get GOTY, MW3 will be the best selling game of the year, and skyrim will be buggy as f*ck!there, now wheres my paycheck?